The demand for scalable storage resources and the ability to provide rapid access to content stored thereby is a key concern to end-users. Enterprises, businesses, and individuals alike now use large scale systems to store data that is remotely accessible via a network. Such systems are often accessible via closed (e.g., enterprise) and open (e.g., Internet) networks and allow concurrent access via multiple client devices. Various implementations of large scale systems relying on network access have been developed. In each implementation, the systems are subject to system backups, hardware updates, and hardware failure.
In order to protect data from loss due to, for example, hardware failures, a technique called “mirroring” is sometimes used: two or more physical copies of the data are maintained in two or more physical locations, such as on differing hardware storage devices. This may be done using a variety of techniques providing associated logical addresses to those copies, such as mirrored discs, RAID systems, and other similar techniques implemented in networked data storage system.